Remembrance - Cemeteries near US-441 in North Carolina (Part 3 of 3)

From our twenty-first century perspective looking backward, the timelines of the Smoky Mountain cemeteries can be vague abstractions, and distant ones at that. All the cemeteries are just old. We personally remember distinct differences between the years 2000 and 2010. But 1900 and 1910 are foreign countries in our minds, and one seems pretty much the same as the other - but not so to those who inhabited those times. After being fed a steady diet of Cades Cove postcards, we might forget that when the National Park was formed some residents were driving cars, and others had upgraded from log cabins to frame houses. Park graves represent society from before the Civil War well into the Industrial Age.

In this final installment in a three-part series, we visit the two Beck Cemeteries off Tow String Road above the Oconaluftee River in North Carolina. This pair of cemeteries, situated so close together you don't even have to move your car to visit both, can open our eyes just a bit to the on-rolling of time, as the two graveyards are referred to as Old Beck and New Beck.

From the Oconaluftee Visitor Center and Mingus Mill section of the Park, out of Cherokee, NC, take Newfound Gap Road (US-441) north (toward Tennessee) and turn right onto Tow String Road. (Coming over from the Tennessee side, Tow String Road will be on your left, down the road after passing the Smokemont entrance.) Cross the bridge over the Oconaluftee River and immediately take a left. Drive as far as you can (passing through the horse camp), until the road is gated with a steel bar - there is parking here, accessing both cemeteries.

The trailheads to both cemeteries appear in the following photograph. Between the gate and the bridge, the path to New Beck begins on the right. On the other side of the bridge, the path up to Old Beck begins immediately on the right.

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Old Beck Cemetery(Labeled on some maps as "Husky Cemetery" or "Huskey Cemetery")

We will visit Old Beck first, so walk past the road gate and cross the small concrete bridge. Stepping off the bridge, immediately go right (follow the signage for "Bradley Fork Trail"). Pass along the edge of the horse pasture fence, then the main trail will swing left (other trails intersect here - just stick with the "Bradley Fork Trail" directional sign). Right after this, an old road cut leads uphill to the right (marked by a "No Horses" sign). Leave the main trail and take this old road.

This is the road to the Old Beck Cemetery and it is a steep sucker. Thankfully it does not go on forever - you will see the clearing of the cemetery parallel to you on the ridge spine above you on the left. Don't let the steep incline discourage you from this piece of history - just don't get in a hurry, stop to rest as needed. Keep reminding yourself it's all downhill coming out.

Our focus here is to try to wrap our minds around the passage of time over decades and generations, as represented by these graves. The Smokies had only a hundred years or so of white/European settlement. The first known settlers did not appear until the 1790s. The Cherokee Removal (Trail of Tears) occurred in the mid-1830s. One hundred years later there was a National Park and the settlers were largely gone.

Entering Old Beck, you find a collection of unmarked, raw stones. There are four engraved headstones at the far end, but these appear to have been installed quite a bit later than the actual burials.

On some level, a gravestone with no inscription might seem tantamount to an unmarked grave. It can be so difficult to see what the world looked like through the eyes of these people because we only look through our own eyes. We think of the burial practices we know today and blithely assume everyone else has always done it our way. But only in the last century did it become commonplace to put a name and date on a headstone. It seems unthinkable today that we would put mother in the ground and not mark the location with her name, but our forebears did just that.

In that day the unmarked stones would hardly have been anonymous, although they seem that way to us looking back today. A grave was marked with an interesting stone, and since no two were alike they would not be confused. A vibrant oral history took care of the rest, keeping track of who lay where. No one needed a billboard to identify a grave. Family Bibles recorded the dates of birth and death. No one foresaw a day when a National Park would uproot them and no one would be around to remember.

Oral history, for all intents, is a thing of the past. Families today pass down stories, but seldom the catalog of minutia and detail that our ancestors kept in their heads before we had computers and librarians to do the job for us. An old timer could have walked through this graveyard and told you who lay beneath every single stone, who they were related to and a litany of biographical footnotes. We are running out of old timers, and it is vital to record their stories while we can, as the oral tradition no longer passes their knowledge forward.

We spoke with a Park ranger who explained to us that inscriptions carved into sandstone can be fragile. Even taking rubbings can cause them to deteriorate. So we might conclude that at least some of the "unmarked" stones could have had inscriptions at one time.

Compared to some of the other cemeteries detailed in this blog series, Old Beck is not choked with weeds and undergrowth. Under the fallen leaves there appears to be a decent blanket of ground moss. Such moss seems to help control the upgrowth of weeds, and even though the shadier locations seem more conducive to this moss, we have elsewhere observed moss in the sun and weeds in the shade.

We counted 27 graves, which coincides with the number listed in the Swain County cemetery book. The site is long and narrow, along the spine of the ridge, never more than two graves across at its widest point. One can understand how they ran out of room and eventually overflowed into the New Beck Cemetery.

Down at the lower end of the cemetery are four manufactured stones, all bearing Civil War-era dates of death (1863, 1864, 1869, 1876). The 1869 stone is mounted on a foundation base. These made-to-order stones do not look Civil War era, and were most likely installed by a later generation.

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New Beck Cemetery

To reach New Beck Cemetery from Old Beck, come back down to the bridge by the parking area. (If you are visiting New Beck directly from your car and bypassing the climb to Old Beck, walk over to the road gate.) The path to New Beck begins between the bar gate and the bridge, heading in the direction away from the Oconaluftee River. It is not a long hike at all and will take you only a few minutes.

Soon the trail turns right and climbs more steadily. Let's face it, almost every cemetery is planted on a hilltop and the only way to get there is up. At least the trail to New Beck is not the cardio workout that the Old Beck roadbed is and the climb is blessedly brief.

This is one of the cemeteries that Jim Casada alerted us to for its condition of neglect. It definitely has more weeds than Old Beck. The plot is larger and more open than the older graveyard, and is therefore sunnier. We saw little evidence of ground moss under the early winter leaf cover, and in its absence the weeds seem to take over. Moreover, with time and lack of upkeep, many of the stones have begun to list off-plumb, leaning to one side or the other as the earth shifts below them. (Some of the photos here seem misaligned, but that is indeed the state of things.)

We took an unscientific, rough count of maybe eighty graves. Renée was initially a bit surprised at the cemetery's size, saying it was like walking into a community. And a community it surely represents, the lives young and old, a chronicle of human life. Most dates of death are the first quarter of the 1900s, with a handful later than that, and other unmarked stones most likely earlier. And so we see glimpses of a community about to be dislocated by the coming of the National Park.

Visiting New Beck Cemetery is like visiting a tombstone museum, in that you find examples of every era of headstone production. You will see everything from unadorned, uninscribed chunks of rock to stones with words crudely scratched into them to plain stones with the simplest of lettering to store-bought headstones that were obviously mass produced to more modern and elaborate stones and finally elegant and polished monuments that one might purchase today. This range bespeaks the span of years interred here.

Even though we detected much less ground moss than at Old Beck, some of the stones are developing moss where dirt gets trapped in letters and crevices, providing a foothold for the moss - yet more evidence of neglect. Note also in the next photo set that the three stones are examples of mass produced headstones with identical designs and identical epigraphs, even though the surnames are different and they are located in different parts of the cemetery.

The remainder of this post will present a few graves that touched us with their unspoken stories.

There was something undeniably sad about the little hand-carved headstone of J.H. and A.E. Beck's ten-week-old infant. Even though one of the Ns in "infant" is reversed, and by now the stone is a struggle to read, a lot of work went into this memorial. It reads:

Infant of JH and AE Beck Born Oct 1 Died 14 1900

Five headstones lined up in a row tell the tragic story of Smith and Lottie Queen, and their four infants. On first impression, the single date and lack of name on each stone implies a child dying the day it was born, and indeed FindAGrave.com lists them as such. But only six months passed between the dates of the first two children. So we do not know what happened. Each of the four child stones reads "Infant of Smith-Lottie Queen" with these dates in four successive years (note that two fall on April 11th):

Oct 5, 1907 Apr 11, 1908 Apr 18, 1909 Apr 11, 1910

Lottie herself died nine years later at age 27, having borne her first child at age 15. The top of her stone bears the word "Mother" - a terrible, ironic truth. (Did another child survive to adulthood, placing her mother's stone later?)

Another tale of child mortality is written on the headstones of Mr. and Mrs. H.C. Beck's three children.

The son who died in 1926 must have been by a second wife, as he was born four years after Hattie died.

(Click the photo to enlarge it for detail.)

Over to one side stand two headstones with much more recent dates than any of the others:

Jeanette Parker Kimsey - Died 1981 Beverly Smith Kimsey - Died 2000

These are modern-day monuments, with some surfaces highly polished and other areas matte finished, engraved with roses and praying hands. These modern stones were undoubtedly installed as an act of love and honor, and it is certainly not our privilege to judge how another might choose to memorialize their loved ones, but somehow these two headstones seem garishly out of place in an old cemetery such as this. It may well be impossible these days to walk into a monument store and even find anything that remotely resembles the simpler designs represented elsewhere throughout the cemetery.

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We came away with perhaps a better perspective of how time progressed in the brief era of white/European settlement in these mountains. It has been said that for a teenager today the Vietnam War is as ancient history as World War One. Anything before our time tends to blur. We either think the settlers were here for centuries, or we think all these graves encompass just a generation or two. We grapple to understand the middle ground.

We visited the two Beck plots on a bleak day in December, when the leafless trees and barrenness of winter render a cemetery lonelier than it might seem at a gentler time of year. Mike Gourley posted a photo of New Beck, taken in the splendor of autumn color and worth taking a look at: http://gosmokies.knoxnews.com/photo/beck-cemetery

Questions for commentors: 1 - Why are some cemeteries covered with ground moss and others not? 2 - Does anyone know the backstories of any of the graves featured here? 3 - Any other information of note or interest about these cemeteries?

Renée and Jim Remembrance - A project to honor and preserve the memory of those at rest in Great Smoky Mountains backcountry cemeteries.

Be sure to read the comments at the end of each post, as knowledgeable readers often add valuable information to what we have said. To read comments in the sequence they were posted (as readers build off each other's input), start at the bottom and work your way backward. (Multiple comments may fill more than one page, in which case start at the bottom of the last page.) Readers possessing additional background and detail are encouraged to post comments to broaden the knowledge base (regardless of how much time may have passed since the original blog entry).

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there is another cemetery very near the becks...park across the lufty and walk across the bridge and turn right to the barn...go thru the fenced area and out the back right corner...pick up path (note long black electric line on ground....not very far now to go to get to the chambers cemetery (i recall chambers but don't have my list near by)

Thank you, Jim C, for pointing us toward your brother's article. To those following the conversation, it is worth the read. The article helps put into context the stories of some of those buried in Old Beck. It underscores our viewpoint that the cemeteries are representations of lives, not deaths. The article is thoughtfully written and the sections that do not pertain directly to our topic here are engaging nonetheless.

Because searching down the post took a few blind tries, here is a direct link to it. The page has two scroll bars - the one on the right for the music playlist, the left one for the article itself. The music does seem to represent the region and era being discussed, but before long it became a distraction from concentrating on what Don was explaining - in the upper left corner of the page is a music pause button. This writer listened to the music while eating dinner, then silenced it to read the article.

Thanks to the careful and meticulous research of my brother, Don, the information you want is readily available for anyone willing to click a couple of keys. He wrote a detailed, interesting, and well-illustrated guest blog on Collins (and his wife) for Tipper Pressley's wonderful daily blog, Blind Pig and the Acorn (www.blindpigandtheacorn.com). The blog focuses on many aspects of mountain ways. Don's piece appeared on Jan. 27, 2013, and you can go to the site, use the box for archived materials, and get right to it. The pair were interesting and important in many ways, from place names (Mt. Collins, Collins Creek, etc.) to the Ocona Lufty Church and all sorts of pioneering influence in the Oconaluftee drainage.

Warning: If you visit the blog you are likely to be hooked. It's where I get my daily dose of good things related to the mountain way of life, and you'll find Tipper a creative, thoughtful, and really interesting woman. As a bonus, her whole family is incredibly gifted musically, and while you read there's fine mountain music playing.

Jim C - It was with interest that we read your remarks about Robert Collins and his place in Smoky Mountain history. One of us (Jim R) has overnighted at Mt. Collins Shelter within the Park (many a moon ago), and we were unaware of the connection when we visited Old Beck. And so now, of course, our curiosity is piqued as to the history here. Knowing you are an author with roots here and a deep interest in the North Carolina side of the Smokies, we would like to unbashfully nudge you toward writing a blog post sharing whatever you think might be of interest about these cemeteries (and others) that we have been discussing.

Of the four headstones at Old Beck that bear inscriptions, we chose the photo of Robert Collins' for the simple reason that it was the dressiest stone and therefore best illustrated our conjecture that the inscribed stones were installed well after the Civil War burial dates. A second stone is Robert's wife, Elizabeth (died 1876). The other two headstones mark the graves of Sarah L. Ogle (died 1864, wife of J. L. Ogle) and Jane M. Beck (died 1869, wife of H. J. Beck). If Sarah and Jane's husbands are buried here, their graves are unmarked and did not receive the upgraded headstones.

There are many variations on the epitaph Walter McCarter mentions. Some are almost eerie, such as:

"Stranger as you pass me by, As you are now so once was I.

And as the worms now eat me, Be prepared for they'll soon eat thee.

In truth, death was far closer to folks three or more generations ago than it is today. Infant mortality ran quite high; consumption (TB) took a considerable toll, as did scarlet fever; and virulent flu epidemics, such as the one of 1919, were so deadly they could wipe out whole families.

Another part of the picture is that most mountain families could not afford a "store-bought tombstone." They made do with field rocks, and when you find etched sandstone, such as the example Jim and Renee offered, often the spelling is off. Set against that though, the emotion is powerful and poignant.

Finally, the Robert Collins for whom you show a tombstone was a figure of great note in the early settlement of the N. C. side of the Smokies, with place names aplenty and historical endeavors of importance connected with the man.

Thank you Walter, for this information. As I was reading it, I remembered my Grandma being able to tell me way back to her GGgrandparents, and I loved every minute of it. And I never though about people back then not being able to read or write either. More to think about.

In reply to Janet and what was said in the first of the Blog-- the old timers could remember all the particulars of who had died and where they were buried without inscribing the stones , but many of the stones have aged and lost their inscriptions from the Rocks they used. "Janet" these ancestors of ours were good record keepers , how else would we have been able to trace our lineage, but on the other hand most could not read or write .I think that the names on the stones wasn't as important then as it is now . Time Changes things and we Change To. An example, my" Family " left the Mtns when I was 6 . I still can recall the conversations around the fire at nite between the" Older Folks " Grndpas and Grndmaws and other Kin about folks long past - who married who- how many youngins borned - when they died - what year and where they were buried . Just maybe these Old Timers memories were so good from eating the pure and simple food they raised on the Farm .Now Today we have T V - Computers and every distraction in the world to keep our minds busy on everything else . Just my thoughts , I'm not trying to discredit anyone . As Janet said " The thought never entered their head about having to leave because a NP was coming . Let us Preserve and Protect as much as possible in our Short Stay here. I remember an inscription I saw on a Head Stone when I was a Kid " As you are now I once was and as I am now You soon shall be . I'm sure some of you have seen this to .To All Keep Up The Good Work